


as luck would have it (you’re still here)

by LostOnMyRoad



Category: Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Black Cat - Freeform, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, felicia knows peter’s identity, friend? you’re a terrible liar peter, ft. harry mj and flash becoming familiar with the batshit insanity that is a peters life, harry mj and flash are like, how much are you hiding from us peter, i wouldn’t say she’s a supervillain, my, parker luck at its peak, uh, well then what is she? uh, you’re awfully friendly with someone who’s a supervillain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:13:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24111862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOnMyRoad/pseuds/LostOnMyRoad
Summary: Peter could never have predicted how the gala would go, Spider-sense be damned. It’s more like glorified anxiety anyway.Or,Felicia and Peter find each other again, although it takes a collapsed building, a broken camera, Harry Osborn attempting to control his blood pressure, and a near-death experience.So all in all an average Tuesday really.(this is not a Peter/Felicia fic, but a Peter and Felicia friendship fic, which I believe are sorely lacking.)
Relationships: Felicia Hardy & Peter Parker, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Parker/Johnny Storm
Comments: 15
Kudos: 33





	as luck would have it (you’re still here)

**Author's Note:**

> not sure how long this will end up being, but i’m a sucker for felicia and peter being chaotic friends so just bear with me

  
  


Peter could never have predicted how the gala would go, Spider-sense be damned. It’s more like glorified anxiety anyway.

Peter has tickets to one of those parties that the New York up and coming liked to throw to show off their wealth or their projects or charities or something or the other. There was always a need for a photographer. He was going to take pictures, armed with his press pass, but Jameson had been feeling oddly generous and gave him extra tickets to give to his friends. He’d said something about Peter not having a life outside his job (ha, ha) and slapped them into Peter’s hand before turning to yell about the lack of trouble the “masked menace” had been getting up to lately.

It wasn’t that Jonah was losing his edge, it was just that Peter had had some exceptional luck lately, getting good PR thanks to regular Avenger team ups. Go figure. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

He calls M.J. and she agrees to come. Harry does as well, although he’d probably already invited. He’s got one ticket left. So Peter calls Flash Thompson, because he’s back in town. It probably will never stop being weird that Flash is one of his friends, but he’d never thought Felicia would be one either so really, what does he know. 

Black Cat might show up, he realizes. The party is the unveiling of another Alchemax project, and Felicia had always had an eye on them. She claimed that while jewelry and other cat burglary was fun, stuff like Alchemax’s was a welcome challenge. He hasn’t seen her in a while, which isn’t unusual. But it could mean she’s planning a heist. 

He never really knows what to expect of her. One minute she’s swinging across the city with him, stopping crime. The next, she’s tasing him and getting away with another crime. 

Then there was that will-we-won’t-we dance that they’d done for a few months, until Peter had decisively decided he couldn’t date a Cat (ha, ha) burglar. Things had fallen apart a little bit after that, both of them hurt and a little bitter.

Which isn’t to say he doesn’t love her, the way he loves Harry and M.J. and Ned, and the way he’d loved Gwen. She’s an amazing friend who just happens to be...unreliable. 

_I can’t stop, Peter._ She’d whispered once, both of them flat on their backs, watching the glittering night sky. _I can’t be like you._

Peter’s downstairs neighbor starts yelling at her husband again, which jerks him out of his reverie. He washes up, stripping out of his work attire and forgets about Felicia. 

He falls asleep thinking of new web fluid formulas and new nicknames to try on Flash.

The next day, he pulls on his slightly battered suit then grabs his camera and the tickets. Catching a cab to the hall takes only a few minutes. M.J. meets him at the front, wearing a delicate looking dress. It’s black and red, and it makes her look like the model she is, no lacy detailing—just M.J., flawless as ever. Harry catches up to them a few minutes later, looking composed in his perfectly tailored suit. 

Peter wonders how he’d managed to find such put together friends when he was such a disaster in the works. At least Flash is less perfect than his two best friends, who always look as if they’ve walked off the cover of a fashion magazine. That said, even Flash probably looks more like he belongs at the party than Peter. Even Gwen had had superior fashion sense, which seems to be a running theme among his friends.

Johnny joked that knowing how to dress was a prerequisite to being his friend, gesturing at himself. _How are you so fashionable challenged when one of your best friends is a literal model?_ he’d asked, mockingly holding his chin in an imitation of the thinker. He had laughed, the New York skyline stretching out in front of them, clearly visible from the top of the Statue of liberty.

Peter had webbed him to lady liberty until he got tired of hearing him complain. Johnny certainly had a mouth on him.

He takes a picture of the three of them (Harry, M.J. and Flash) outside the building, just for fun. Pretending they’re celebrities, M.J. imitating the sultry smiles of the New York socialites with Harry posing like he’s been doing it all his life. Which he has. Flash smiles a goofy grin and gives him two thumbs up.

The building looks alright from the outside, slightly crumbled and wind-battered like most of New York, but the inside was something else entirely.

Heavy chandeliers hung from the ceiling, resplendent with cords of shimmering cut glass. The whole place smells of heavy perfume, and dresses of all colors and styles and themes dotted the crowd, paired off with the suits of the men. There are flowers in crystal cut vases in every corner, especially on the huge staircase that is the focal point of the room, leading up to a balcony with lacy-looking white marble railings.

Even Harry looks slightly surprised by the opulence of the whole thing. M.J. seems more interested in the food going around, stepping past a gaping Flash to sample something small and fancy looking that Peter couldn’t name if he tried.

They manage to enjoy the place for a grand total of thirty minutes before everything goes to shit. 

There’s a loud clanging sound and shouting coming from the level above the huge staircase, made up with red carpeting and curved as it leads to the balcony overlooking the hall. 

“What a crowd,” someone says in a sultry, familiar voice. Peter groans.

Black Cat is descending the staircase, wearing a silver dress that clings to her like a second skin. It glitters like it’s made of diamonds, catching the light. The same shade as her hair, it makes her look like a ghost, or an angel. It must have helped her sneak past the guards, hiding in plain sight. She tases a man as she glides forward to the front of the balcony, grinning as he keels over. Felicia soaks in the moment, blinding on the balcony.

She usually sticks to stealth work and the shadows—she must have been feeling the need for something bigger to come out during the day. a creature of the night, she is, practically nocturnal and living under the light of the moon. 

And then things get even crazier, when the bullets start flying.

Seedy looking folk start pouring out into the hall, hoisting weapons and pointing them at none other than Black Cat. Competition, Peter guesses, and not the friendly kind.

Felicia rips the silver gown off, revealing the catsuit. Her mask is in place, matching with the rest of her typical black outfit. She leaps off of the railing instead of walking down the rest of the stairs, landing on one henchman and punching out another.

Still, one comes up behind her as she kicks a third goon. 

He yells out her name, taking whatever object that happened to be nearest, which was a crystal vase, and slamming it into the nearest thug. The man reads back, clutching at his now broken nose.

Felicia whips around, startled, eyes widening at the sound of his voice. She has just enough time to tase. the man who’d been about to slam her in the head with a club.

She looks around for him, clearly expecting him to be in costume, judging by the way she eyes the ceiling first. 

“Over here,” he calls, over Harry’s frantic shushing, and she raises her eyebrows, taking in his non-costumed appearance. 

“Thanks for the warning, Petey,” she smiles, all teeth. She sounds confident, but Peter can read the surprise behind her eyes. They stare at each other for a moment, still a little shocked.

“Dude,” Flash says. “You know Black Cat?”

Peter had forgotten he was there. He fumbles for an answer that isn’t ‘sometimes she torments me when I’m in spandex and sometimes she torments me when I’m not’ and eventually decides on the incredibly eloquent answer of “Yes.”

Flash looks like his jaw might hit the floor. M.J. whistles from behind him, while Harry slow claps and shakes his head. Peter wants the Earth to swallow him.

“What are you here for, Cat?”

She holds up a USB. “Got an offer to break in and get some info. Of course, I may have gone and done a little extra thieving.”

She pulls down the neckline of her catsuit to show off a necklace, pearl-filled and glinting. Flash has gone red.

“Like the jewels?” she asks, clearly toying with him. “Like what you see?”

Flash goes even redder. 

Black Cat turns to him, silver eyes visible through the mask. “Whaddya day we team up? I’ll help you and your little friends get out safely, and you let me keep my prize.”

Felicia plays with the USB, spinning it by its lanyard around her finger. 

Peter pinches the bridge of his nose before nodding.

“Is our pal Spider-man going to join us or not?” she asks, and Flash makes a choking sound behind her. 

“You know Spider-Man too?” Flash whimpers, his mouth making an _O._ Felicia blows him a kiss. Peter wonders why this is a surprise considering he’s been taking pictures of Spider-Man for years.

“You have good taste,” Felicia tells Flash. Peter rolls his eyes and starts praying right then and there because there is no way this isn’t ending in disaster. If this turns out all right he might make like Daredevil and believe in God’s forgiveness. 

“I don’t know if he can make it,” he answers Felicia, and she gives him a questioning look before realizing that Spider-man can’t make an appearance without someone finding out his identity. 

“Shame,” she says, winking. “He’s so fun to watch in action. I guess you’ll have to do, Peter.”

She hands him one of the tranquilizer guns that the guards had dropped and motions for him to come to the balcony. He crouches to avoid being seen and stops when they are shoulder to shoulder, ignoring the whispered shouting from behind him. 

His friends look surprised, and he belatedly remembers that none of them know he’s a vigilante who’s been in far worse situations. Thankfully, if the haven’t figured it out yet they probably won’t ever. He’d showed up to places with the suit still on, for gods sake. It had fallen out of his backpack once—he’d lied and said it was his pajamas. Somehow they believed him.

“You’re crazy,” Harry is whispering under his breath. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

Peter ignores him in favor of grabbing Felicia’s shoulder and pointing at the chandelier above the robbers.

“Think you can take it out?”

She makes an affirmative sound and pulls out her grappling hook, launching it so that the chandelier crashes to the ground, taking out any enemies on the first floor. Unfortunately, it also alerted one on their floor, who picks up his weapon and charges at them, eyes glaring balefully out of his ski mask. Peter shoves Felicia aside as she pulls back the grappling hook and bashes the man upside the head with the tranq gun. 

“You could have just shot him, sweetheart,” she manages as she uses the rope from the hook to tie the man’s arms together. 

“Yeah, well, easier to hit him than try my terrible aim, darling.” 

Flash makes a noise like a dying whale.

They grin at each other before Felicia lunges for him and takes out another robber who’d snuck up behind him without time for his Spider-sense to kick in. She kicks his feet out from under him and then shoots him with the tranq gun, grabbing Peter’s hand and pulling the trigger with him. 

He nods his thanks, then turns to the staircase leading up to the third floor, where Tombstone had gone, presumably to raid the rest of the partygoers. 

“Sure Spidey can’t join us?” Felicia checks her nails, turning her hand back and forth before blowing on them, as if checking whether her manicure is still perfect.

He shakes his head, acutely aware of his friends gaping at him from the corridor where they’re hidden. 

They continue their surge through the hall, clearing a path to the main exit. They work in tandem with each other, as if the months of no contact hadn’t happened. Goon after goon falls at their feet.

Flash looks like his entire worldview has been destroyed. M.J. looks delighted in the violence, Harry has his face in his hands.

One of the men gets lucky though. He’s got a bomb of some sorts, and he detonates it. The last Peter sees of the bastard is some uneven teeth in a grotesque imitation of a smile before the blast knocks a chunk of the building loose. 

And then all he knows is pain, white-hot in his skull as the one of the beams of the building comes down on him. For a few moments he can’t even vocalize his pain, choking on a gasp. It _hurts._

Felicia rips the beam off, and puts her hands on his cheeks, almost gentle. She drags him a little, farther from the rubble and debris before dropping down to his side.

“Hey,” she manages, softly. Her hands are on his face, holding him so he has no choice but to look up at her.

“Hey yourself,” he manages to gasp. “Not my best moment.”

“Not your best work, no.”

Felicia bites her lip, running her hands through his scalp to check for bumps. Peter is suddenly acutely aware of the blood trickling down over his forehead, and Felicia’s fingers as she quickly assesses his condition. He keeps losing little chunks of time. The scene is oddly familiar, reminiscent of that time he’d gotten clobbered by Scorpion and she’d had to peel him off the pavement and drop him off at Matt’s place.

A sudden commotion by his side makes him aware of M.J. and Flash and Harry, who as a team had managed to distract and knock out two of the other goons. M.J. lets out a short gasp as she kneels down beside him, and Harry hovers like the mother hen he really is, Flash peering from behind his shoulder.

“I’m not a mother hen, Peter. You’re just an idiot.” He doesn’t sound angry, oddly enough.

Ah. So maybe he was less in control of his words than he thought, if he’d said that out loud.

“Sssorry,” he slurs. The world seems oddly syrupy. “Hey Cat, why’s your hair gray? You aren’t...you aren't that old.”

Felicia purses her lips together and gently places a hand on his forehead, carefully avoiding smearing the blood.

“He’s definitely got a concussion,” she says to Harry, looking worried. “He’s strong, you should see him as Spi—“ she cuts herself off just in time, before Peter can panic. 

“—when he’s, ah, stretching,” she finishes lamely.

Everyone takes that the wrong way.

“You did the dirty with Black Cat?” Flash looks absolutely floored.

Peter, by contrast, wants the floor to swallow him. 

“You’ve given me gray hairs,” Felicia chuckles while answering his earlier questions. She is shaking her head, but it doesn’t match her worried expression.

She whispers something to Harry, who pulls out his phone and starts dialing. 

Peter groans and tries to lift the arm that doesn’t hurt to pat himself down and feels the shattered ruins of his camera and sighs. Jonah’s gonna kill him. At least he’s lucky that the shards of glass and warped plastic didn‘t impale him or something.

Flash takes his wandering appendage and lays it back down in the ground. “Stay put, Parker. You’re not in much better shape than the camera.”

“Eugene,” M.J. says as a warning. Flash sighs lightly, patting Peter's hand before straightening up and standing.

There’s no sound except a few groaning henchmen, one of whom M.J. had taken out with a chair on her way to them. 

Peter was hoping he’d pass out, but apparently the concussion can’t stop him from running his mouth before he eventually does. 

“Felicia?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

She blinks, thrown. “For what, Peter?”

He waves a hand around erratically, before sighing. “Everything.”

“Hey now,” she whispers, looking more open than he’s seen her in months. “None of that was your fault and you know it. Not your fault ended up the way we did, alright?”

He must not give an affirmative enough response, because she snaps her fingers in front of his eyes to get his attention, before hissing “Peter. I don’t hate you for leaving, alright? It hurt, but we were always heading towards that, weren’t we?”

When Peter shakes his head—wincing at the movement—she looks a little angry.

“Fine,” she says wearily. “Apology accepted.”

“You and me, we’re never going to be what we were, but that’s alright. I could use some friends again, Petey.”

Peter manages a loopy smile, and Felicia laughs and smooths down his hair.

Harry returns from whatever phone call he’d been making. “Ambulance is on its way,” he huffs. Everyone looks a little relieved.

Harry arches an eyebrow, his face swimming into view. “So how did this—“ he gestures broadly to Felicia and Peter—“become a thing.” Everyone seems very interested in his response, despite keeping quiet during his and Felicias’s sudden heart-to-heart.

Peter is not mentally present enough to answer that. Thankfully, Cat takes it upon herself to answer.

“We went to the same yoga class.” she purrs. “I could watch him do downward dog forever.”

Peter hates her and he hates his life. Forgiveness be dammed, Cat is the next on his shit list.

She smiles at him, head tilted so her hair conceals her playful grin from the rest of the peanut gallery.

He manages a frown, before it melts into a smirk.

They all wait for a few moments longer, listening to the occasional clanging noise or crash as the building settles after the explosions and general mayhem that had occurred.

He loses track of time for a moment, unable to focus on the voices talking over his head. The pain spikes suddenly, and he curls in on himself.

“Ben,” he slurs, and distantly notes everybody going still for a moment, Felicia’s face betraying nothing except the slight furrow of her brow and downturn of her lips. “Think I hit my head too hard. Don’t tell...don’t tell May, she’ll ground me…”

“Oh, Peter,” someone says, quietly, but he’s too far gone to tell who it is.

He can hear sirens, distantly, and running footsteps.

Someone is squeezing his hand, and he tries to squeeze back before losing his grip on reality entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments are very very much appreciated! also come talk to me on my tumblr, i have the same username


End file.
